If you're like me, you'll feel right at home with Sea of Stars. Chrono Trigger was the first title I ever completed, and this game is arguably aimed at me personally: solid writing, fun 2D graphics, timed hits, an amazing soundtrack, and homages to SNES games left and right.
Is it perfect? No. But it's better than it has any right to be.
Some of its mechanics are leaps and bounds above not only what Chrono Trigger did but what many games still do today. "Too Awesome to Use" is averted via Item Crafting: all your items are Medicinal Cuisine, meaning you can always cook more later, and the game adds tension by capping you at 10 dishes at a time. The Relics handle Modular Difficulty in a Watsonian fashion, allowing you to take granular control over what you're experiencing. Basic attacks restore Magic Points by default, so you don't have to hoard your spells. The stat system is slimmed down by just removing Attack Failure Chance, Critical Hit and Speed, instead working those things into the battle mechanics and timed hits. You can tag in members of your reserve party at any time, allowing the programmers to up the difficulty. The traversal mechanics and play controls are tight and fun. And, most importantly, in-battle death is replaced with Circling Birdies; a "dead" character will pick themselves up after a few turns and get back into the fight. This not only has gameplay implications, it would mean that a Plotline Death in this game would have way more resonance than Aerith's did.
Some of it is... less good. I don't like FF7 because the Powers as Programs nature of Materia makes characters interchangeable, but I also don't like how Sea of Stars's characters have zero customization; I wanted something in between so that I could put a Creator Thumbprint on my party. The list of abilities is simply too short; towards the end I was just dumping out the same spells over and over in the hopes of slogging through battles. There are dungeons for the sake of padding — never a good look. And the equipment system goes straight back to The '90s: "I find a new piece of EQ, it's guaranteed to be better than what I already have." If it's going to be that non-interactive, why even include it?
To be clear, I'm not expecting Final Fantasy VII Remake. Sabotage Studios employs, so far as I can tell, 25 people, and if there's any justice, some of their innovations will become Once Original, Now Common. Is it selfish of me to want more? Yes. For now, I think we should be grateful that we got such an astounding product at all.
VideoGame The deconstructed J/RPG
If you're like me, you'll feel right at home with Sea of Stars. Chrono Trigger was the first title I ever completed, and this game is arguably aimed at me personally: solid writing, fun 2D graphics, timed hits, an amazing soundtrack, and homages to SNES games left and right.
Is it perfect? No. But it's better than it has any right to be.
Some of its mechanics are leaps and bounds above not only what Chrono Trigger did but what many games still do today. "Too Awesome to Use" is averted via Item Crafting: all your items are Medicinal Cuisine, meaning you can always cook more later, and the game adds tension by capping you at 10 dishes at a time. The Relics handle Modular Difficulty in a Watsonian fashion, allowing you to take granular control over what you're experiencing. Basic attacks restore Magic Points by default, so you don't have to hoard your spells. The stat system is slimmed down by just removing Attack Failure Chance, Critical Hit and Speed, instead working those things into the battle mechanics and timed hits. You can tag in members of your reserve party at any time, allowing the programmers to up the difficulty. The traversal mechanics and play controls are tight and fun. And, most importantly, in-battle death is replaced with Circling Birdies; a "dead" character will pick themselves up after a few turns and get back into the fight. This not only has gameplay implications, it would mean that a Plotline Death in this game would have way more resonance than Aerith's did.
Some of it is... less good. I don't like FF7 because the Powers as Programs nature of Materia makes characters interchangeable, but I also don't like how Sea of Stars's characters have zero customization; I wanted something in between so that I could put a Creator Thumbprint on my party. The list of abilities is simply too short; towards the end I was just dumping out the same spells over and over in the hopes of slogging through battles. There are dungeons for the sake of padding — never a good look. And the equipment system goes straight back to The '90s: "I find a new piece of EQ, it's guaranteed to be better than what I already have." If it's going to be that non-interactive, why even include it?
To be clear, I'm not expecting Final Fantasy VII Remake. Sabotage Studios employs, so far as I can tell, 25 people, and if there's any justice, some of their innovations will become Once Original, Now Common. Is it selfish of me to want more? Yes. For now, I think we should be grateful that we got such an astounding product at all.